How can Optus even consider the idea of changing its name? Or furthermore, absurdly consider changing it to what has been effectively its positioning for the past few years? Plenty has been written about the insanity of Optus potentially changing its name to “yes”. What’s next? Commbank calling itself “can” can’t be...
Every week I see the stories trumpeted across the pages of the business press. “Brand launch”, as if it is a space shuttle shimmering with unspent force just waiting for lift off. “Rebrand”, complete with (at least) a shiny new logo, clever tagline and assorted related items. Box ticked, event...
I was interviewed last year for an ABC News story about the new questions around the VW braking issues that are being raised in light of the emissions cheating scandal. The show aired last Sunday night and the next day I sent out a quick tweet noting that part of the interview...
There’s a lot of ink spilled these days about a thing called customer centricity. All over the place organisations are calling on their employees to be more “customer-centric”. And amidst a whole jargon filled lexicon of customer experience related terms this one puzzles me the most. Stripping back the jargon, a...
Unexpectedly and delightfully I ran into my friend @AJKulatunga yesterday. We always have great conversations and this one quickly ranged into the uncomfortable necessity of discipline in successful businesses. Discipline is a fairly unsexy concept bringing to mind images of soldiers on the drill field and the early morning training grind...
I was asked one of my least favorite questions last week. “Can you give me some examples of what other people are doing?” It’s pretty easy to get distracted and enamored by what other organisations are saying and doing. And to take the next step of trying their ideas on for...
There are lots things that really annoy me. One that routinely lands high on that list is the way the term brand gets elevated to some kind of supernatural being with extraordinary powers to do things. You will have read the headlines, heard the commentary. The brand did … the brand...
This week is all about what I called “the third element” of brand – your positioning. It’s the element of brand that’s most often treated as key basis for marketing, but I take a different view and think it should go much deeper than that. I like the general Free Dictionary definition...
The first step to brand alignment is getting the foundations right. One thing that truly irks me is the idea that you need a separate set of things to define what that is. Because when I talk about the foundations of brand, I’m not talking about a whole separate raft of things...
One of the first things I say when talking with groups about brand is that they need to forget what they think they know – that brand is part of marketing. In the process I often find myself caught in a kind of brand gotcha game. Let me explain. Over the...